Zora Arkus-Duntov

Zora Arkus-Duntov (December 25, 1909 – April 21, 1996) was a Belgian-born American engineer whose work on the Chevrolet Corvette earned him the nickname "Father of the Corvette."

He is sometimes erroneously referred to as the inventor of the Corvette, whereas that title belongs to Harley Earl.

Duntov was born Zachary Arkus in Brussels, Belgium, on December 25, 1909.

His parents were both Russian-born Jews; his father Yakov “Jacques” Arkus was a mining engineer and his mother Rachel Kogan was a medical student.

After the family returned to their hometown of Saint Petersburg – then Petrograd – Duntov's parents divorced and his mother's new partner, Josef Duntov, an electrical engineer, moved into the household.

Even after the divorce, Jacques continued to live with the family, and out of respect for both men, Zora and younger brother Yura took on the hyphenated last name of Arkus-Duntov.

In 1927, the family moved to Berlin.

While Duntov's early boyhood ambition was to become a streetcar driver, streetcars later gave way to motorcycles and automobiles.

His first motorized vehicle was a 350 cc motorcycle, which he rode at nearby racetracks as well as through the streets of Berlin.

When his parents, fearing for his safety, insisted he trade the cycle in for an automobile, Duntov bought a cycle-fendered model from a short-lived German manufacturer called Bob (automobile).

The Bob was set up for oval track racing.

It had no front brakes and weak rear brakes.

In 1934, Duntov graduated from the Charlottenburg Technological University (known today as the Technical University of Berlin).

He also began writing engineering papers in German motor publications.

While in Berlin Duntov met the fourteen year old Elfriede "Elfi" Wolff, who was in the city to study ballet and acrobatic dance.

The two kept in touch over several years while Elfi toured with dance troupes.

She eventually settled in Paris as a dancer with the Folies Bergère.

The two married in February 1939, just before the outbreak of World War II.

Following the outbreak of the war first Yura, then Zora, joined the French Air Force.

When France surrendered, Duntov obtained exit visas from the Spanish consulate in Marseilles, not only for Elfi and himself, but for his brother and parents as well.

Elfi, who was still living in Paris at the time, made a dramatic dash to Bordeaux in her MG just ahead of the advancing Nazi troops.

In the meantime, Duntov and Yura hid in a bordello.

Five days later, Elfi met up with Duntov and his family and later they boarded a ship in Portugal bound for New York.

Settling in Manhattan, in 1942 the two brothers established the Ardun Mechanical Corporation, the name a portmanteau of Arkus and Duntov.

Ardun initially produced dies and punches for ammunition and later produced parts for aircraft.

Arkus-Duntov attempted to qualify a Talbot-Lago for the Indianapolis 500 in 1946 and 1947, but failed to make the race both years.

At this time Zora Arkus-Duntov got an invitation from a British company, while his brother decided to go into finances.

In 1947 the company introduced their own aluminum, overhead valve, hemispherical combustion chamber cylinder heads for the flathead Ford V8 engine.

Conceived by Duntov, the heads were designed by George Kudasch.

The purpose of the overhead valve design was to cure the persistent overheating of the valve-in-block flathead V8.

The flathead 'siamesed' the two center exhaust ports into a single tube, creating a large heat transfer from the hot gases to the coolant that was eliminated in the overhead valve design.

The Ardun heads allowed significant increases in power output from the Ford V8.

Ardun grew into a 300 employee engineering company with a name as revered as Offenhauser, but the company later went out of business after some questionable financial decisions by a partner the Arkus-Duntov brothers had taken on.

Soon he left the United States for England to do development work on the Allard sports car, co-driving it at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1952 and in 1953.

His goal was to improve and prepare the company's cars for the race "24 hours of Le Mans."

It is noteworthy that some of them were Ford V8, on which Duntov applied, among other things, his old achievements.

The owners and at the same time Allard racers Sydney Allard and his wife Eleanor noticed the achievements of the engineer.

In 1952–53, Duntov acted as a Le Mans racer on the Allard J2X Le Mans and Allard JR models.

In the same years, Carroll Shelby raced in Allard machines.

He was also a professional racing driver, appearing at the 24 Hours of Le Mans four times and taking class wins in 1954 and 1955.